AMD/ATI Publishes GPU Documentation

ATI has released the complete 3D register reference guide for Radeon 6XX/7XX chips, greatly simplifying the work of the open source Radeon HD driver project

According to an announcement by AMD's Alexander Deucher on the xorg mailing list yesterday, AMD/ATI has followed up their promise of support for open source drivers and accordingly released the 3D documentation.

The information should lead to improvements in the stability and function range of free Radeon drivers. Whether documentation regarding special CPU features such as the parallel operation of Crossfire Hybrid and Puma Platform, or PowerXpress, (which switches from the powerful GPU to the energy saving chipset graphic when mobile), will also be released is still unclear.

Although video acceleration and improved graphic chips are already included in the partly proprietary ATI fglrx driver, patches for the popular Linux media player projects Xine, Mplayer or VideoLAN Client, necessary to take advantage of the acceleration, are as yet unavailable.

It was good news across the board for ATI graphics card owners with AMD deciding to go for a free driver and immediately delivering the goods. Now the proprietary Linux driver, Fglrx 8.42.3, has been released, and it promises various improvements.